Under current market practice, some interest-bearing instruments generate asymmetric price changes in response to interest rate changes. For example, there would be a financial incentive for a homeowner to refinance a mortgage were the market interest rate for mortgages to fall: upon refinancing, the homeowner's monthly payments would be adjusted downward. However, there would be no financial incentive for the homeowner to refinance a mortgage were the market interest rate for mortgages to rise.
In part, this asymmetric behavior is driven by current market pricing and structuring conventions under which some implicit embedded options in borrowing instruments are recognized and priced, while other implicit embedded options are either not considered, not priced, or not priced properly.
It is well known that certain interest-bearing instruments are difficult to construct, price, and hedge. For example, the pricing response of mortgage-backed securities (“MBS”) is known to reflect both economic and non-economic market factors. (As used herein, “MBS” may refer to one or more mortgaged-backed securities.) Economic factors that affect pricing may include, among other things: the right to buy the underlying debt obligations back from the creditor; the historical interest rate at the inception of the underlying obligations; the current market interest rate for substantially similar obligations; the debtor's degree of indebtedness; and the value of the underlying collateral (if any). Non-economic factors that affect pricing may include, among other things: the debtor's consumption preferences for the intrinsic value of the housing received at spot (i.e., current market interest rate) through the borrowing of money versus the value of the money to be foregone at a later time via interest and principal repayments.
In particular, the price/yield response of MBS or other similar collateralized instruments may reflect embedded and implicit call options within the collateral underlying the MBS. These call options allow the debtor (such as a homeowner) to buy the underlying loan back from the creditor (such as a bank). Because debtors are allowed to repay the face value of the outstanding balance of the underlying borrowing at par at any time prior to the nominal maturity, MBS, from the investor's perspective, are subject to prepayment or contraction risk (shortening of nominal tenor). Market participants recognize that the debtor's ability to repay the underlying borrowing at any time is impliedly equivalent to the debtor being long a call option to buy back the outstanding face value (i.e., the remaining book value) of the borrowing at any time, while the creditor is understood to be, impliedly, short that same call option.
In consequence, in a declining interest rate environment, the owner of an MBS (which bundles callable loans together into one security) may have the tenor of his MBS shorten dramatically. If the tenor of his investment shortens because the underlying collateral is called away, the MBS investor must reinvest his funds at lower rates of interest. Because the MBS investor is not protected against falling rates, the MBS investor does not have the protection afforded by an interest rate floor (“IRF”). An IRF is typically struck at a level, “X”, to insure against revenue losses that would be generated by interest rates dropping below X. If interest rates drop, the owner of the IRF option will collect, approximately, the present value of the difference between the strike rate X and the new lower interest rate multiplied by the notional amount of the IRF. Thus, declining interest rates generate losses for any investor who is not long an IRF. To phrase the matter in the inverse sense, any investor not long an IRF is, impliedly, short an IRF and thus unprotected in the event of interest rate declines; any investor in a callable security is short an IRF and, in consequence, experiences revenue losses generated by declining interest rates.
The MBS investor's implied short IRF is equivalent to a short (impliedly sold to the debtor on the underlying collateral) one-touch or barrier knock-out option struck at the original contract rate: when rates drift or diffuse or jump below the original contract rate (touch or pass through or transit the barrier), the MBS investor's option on the MBS yield (at the original contract level) is knocked out or negated when homeowners exercise their long call on the underlying collateral. When that implied short IRF option knocks out, the MBS investor experiences tenor contraction risk, and is free to reissue securities at the lower market level; but, in consequence, earns a lower rate of return on his new investments.
Because the existence of the implicit call option is generally accepted, market pricing dynamics explicitly calculate the value of MBS instruments (constructed from underlying instruments, generally residential mortgages or whole loans) inclusive of the call option, even though those securities only implicitly carry this callability. It is well understood that lower levels of market interest rates will provide the underlying debtors with an incentive to buy back and to refinance their borrowings, whereas higher market interest rates will usually create a disincentive for the underlying debtors, absent non-economic (“irrational”) reasons, to buy back and refinance the borrowings or loans at uneconomic (higher) interest rates.
It would be advantageous to provide systems and methods that would permit taking the market pricing convention (inclusive of the implicit call option) currently used and extending that pricing methodology to include other aspects of the underlying instrument's embedded, implied optionality in order to allow an instrument to be retired, in whole or in part, or extended in tenor, in whole or in part, and/or adjusted as to rate, in whole or in part.
Additionally, it would be advantageous to improve current interest-bearing instruments—and indeed the pricing of all market loan instruments—by moving them closer to full compliance with the hoped-for parity equivalence expected of arbitrage-free markets. While not arbitrage-free, such improved instruments would represent a more efficient trading vehicle for consumers, hedgers, and speculators in interest-rate markets, no matter what the nature of the instrument, and whether or not the product is attached to a related or underlying aggregation of collateral.
It would further be advantageous to create or manufacture an interest-bearing instrument such that, no matter what the level of current interest rates relative to the interest rate levels at the time of original instrument issuance, the instrument more accurately reflects the value to the debtor and the creditor of taking a “view” relative to: 1) the current/spot expected term structure of forward interest rates (spot-forwards); and/or 2) the expected forward evolution of the forward term structure of interest rates (forward-forwards). Such forward “views” should reflect the expected probabilities of: rate neutrality, rate decreases, and rate increases.